First Listen: Squarepusher, 'Damogen Furies'

April 13, 2015 3:03 AM

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Of all the fitful, fractious breakbeat expressionists who got their start in the U.K. in the late 1990s — see also: Aphex Twin, Autechre, μ-ziq — Squarepusher has proven the most wild and untamed. Unpredictability has always been integral to a genre that merges rave-minded electronic sounds with the strictures of so-called IDM (intelligent dance music), but Squarepusher is alone in his capacity to swerve between club bangers and, say, jazz-fusion suites or even an album made with nothing more than dexterous jams on solo electric bass.

Damogen Furies, the latest in a list of albums dating back to 1996, finds Squarepusher at his most bombastic and intense, with enough bludgeoning beats and epic sonic seizures to take on the heaviest EDM upstarts of the world. "Stor Eiglass" starts off as if in the middle of a ritual already underwa...